Blog 2 - It Could Never be Simple

When I began to think of what topic I would select, I planned to write something that might not be that abstract like the topic Melancholy in the previous English class. So I decided to talk about animation because it is close to my life. I have never stopped to watch it since I’ve grown up. That’s the same for some of the adults. I know this could be taken as naïve for other adults especially the parents. They may try to be mature in front of friends. Some parents may get a feel that animation is so simple because they may have been spending too much on watching the children animations with their kids. There’s a common sense that animation is supposed to be simple and created for children first, while the needs of adolescents on the types and contents of animations are not satisfied well at most time. Let alone the adults’. So a development of animation would not happen since all the audiences cannot see the animations that they want to watch. Only a small group of audiences always has the chance to watch the targeted animation. So what? Is it really important and needing our thinking? Anyway animation is just one kind of entertainment. It may not be considered as serious as the textbook that is treated as the significant education for students. It may just want to tell a tiny story. It may not leave anything in your mind after you watch it for three days. It may just make you laugh for a while. Does it require our more consideration and research on it? I was thinking and trying to dig out the meanings behind.

         The answer I thought out is yes because this status that foreign animations play a role in our mass media market could lead to several results. One result is that older adolescents and adults get inclined to watch the prominent animation from Japan or America where the animation industry is quite developed and get influenced by the cultural values reflected in the animation. I don’t object importing the animations from other countries. It is not a bad thing to touch them. But I cannot evaluate how deep these foreign animations can influence. No one can do it. We don’t need to publicize our own cultures and core values all the time but we have to build it because our children and adolescents like animation and are probably being influenced. And then the inheritance of our local culture may have somewhat in danger. The other result is the quality of the foreign animations has become a standard in the heart of our animation fandoms. That means our animation fandoms have already had high requirements on local animations. Once there is a little deficiency in our animation, it is easy to be pointed out and criticized by the fandoms. So our animators have very high pressure. Why aren’t our animators able to generate excellent animation? We don’t lack of human, technologies that are imported directly by using a lot of money, and foreign resources. What do we lack of on earth? Some foreign media said that Chinese students are very inflexible and not creative. Well, I think this is not the root reason. So it could be meaning for my topic if I can find out some deeper reasons.

         May I should find it from the bottom of animation that is what animation is in essence. What should a good animation look like? These years, we have spent plenty of money on the technologies to make 3D animation or introduce foreign big animation companies. So what? We simply think that once we have advanced technologies we can generate great animation. However it turns out that we still can’t succeed in the box office such as Legend of Rabbit. We do tell stories but it looks like the Kung Fu Panda. “So this is just copying.” What I see is confusion that means our animator don’t know what to create. Because Kung Fu Panda succeeded and our audience couldn’t believe and ask for a prominent animation that included our culture and panda, Legend of Rabbit was born in this situation. It does talk about Kung Fu and Panda. But the plots are just dry. The audiences actually want to see a new good story. They want great storytelling in the end. What can tough the audiences is the actions and the change of feelings from the characters, not the technologies. We may find the sources from our lives.

         As we know, rating system is the basis of animation industry. But except for guiding the animation audiences, there must be some benefits from it I need to find out so that we can see more importance of it. I remember a Hong Kong director said that since there is no proper rating system in the film market in the mainland he is not free to create one type of film freely in the frame of rating system. Because the film needs to meet a lot of kind of audiences including adolescents and adults, it could not be too much violent, horrific or romantic and so on, which bothers the film makers. I think the animator could encounter a similar situation.

         Since I explored much on each key term in my alternative perspective like I did in the vignette, I would use most of its contents in my synthesis essays to explain those key term in detail. But I still need to think about abridging the first synthesis essay carefully and make them more focused on a certain problem and serve for my working thesis well.